Foreword: Polidori revisited – Christopher Frayling
Part I: The birth of The Vampyre
1 Introduction – Sam George and Bill Hughes
2 Phantasmagoria: Polidori’s The Vampyre from theatricals to vampire- slaying kits – Sam George
3 A séance in Bristol Gardens: Reassessing The Vampyre – Fabio Camilletti
4 Byromania: Polidori, fandom and the Romantic vampire’s celebrity origins – Harriet Fletcher
5 Rebellion, treachery, and glamour: Lady Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon, Polidori, and the progress of the Romantic vampire – Bill Hughes
6 Sexual contagions: Romantic vampirism and tuberculosis; or, ‘I should like to die of a consumption’ – Marcus Sedgwick
7 The Vampyre, Aubrey, and Frankenstein – Nick Groom
Part II: The legacy of The Vampyre
8 From lord to slave: Revolt and parasitism in Uriah Derick D’Arcy’s The Black Vampyre – Sam George and Bill Hughes
9 ‘But if thine eye be evil’: Tropes of vision in the rise of the modern vampire – Ivan Phillips
10 ‘Knowledge is a fatal thing’; or, from fatal whispers to vampire songs: Breaking Polidori’s oath in The Vampire Chronicles and Byzantium – Sorcha Ní Fhlainn
11 ‘The deadly hue of his face’: The genesis of the vampiric gentleman and his deadly beauty; or, how Lord Ruthven became Edward Cullen – Kaja Franck
12 Vampensteins from Villa Diodati: The assimilation of pseudo- science in twenty-first-century vampire fiction – Jillian Wingfield
Afterword: St Pancras Old Church and the mystery of Polidori’s grave – Sam George
Appendix 1 John William Polidori, The Vampyre
Appendix 2 George, Lord Byron, ‘A Fragment’
References
Index

John Polidori is the least regarded figure in the history of literary vampirism and yet his influential novella The Vampyre (1819) is perhaps ‘the most influential horror story of all time’ (Frayling). Surprisingly, it has never before been the subject of a book-length critical study. Polidori’s story transformed the shambling, mindless monster of folklore into a sophisticated, seductive aristocrat that stalked London society rather than being confined to the hinterlands of Eastern Europe.

This collection explores the genesis of Polidori’s vampire. It then tracks his bloodsucking progeny across the centuries and maps his disquieting legacy from the melodramatic vampire theatricals in the 1820s, through further Gothic fictions and horror films, to twenty-first-century paranormal romance. It includes a critique of the fascinating and little-known The Black Vampyre (1819) – a text inspired by Polidori and the first Black vampire in fiction. Leading and emerging scholars of the vampire and Gothic provide innovative analyses of the variations on monstrosity and deadly allure spawned by Polidori’s revenant. The collection advances from the ground-breaking research of Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires and the Undead from the Enlightenment to the Present Day. Appended is an annotated edition of the text of The Vampyre and supplementary material.

Polidori died a suspected suicide aged 25; he has been sorely neglected. This stimulating collection makes a coherent case for the importance of John Polidori’s tale and redeeming ‘poor Polidori’.